In this episode I let you in on my favourite SEO Metric, I talk about getting out of my comfort zone, and when I think an entrepreneur should say no to new opportunities.
[Transcript]
Adam: Hey, everybody, on this episode, we’re gonna talk about my favorite: SEO Metrics. We’re gonna talk about this show, and we’re gonna talk about when to say no to opportunities and when to say yes.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Steele Entrepreneur Show. My name is Adam Steele, and this is episode eight. We’ve made it to episode eight, which is incredible. I figured this would be a little bit like…the other day, I said, “I’m gonna start vlogging daily,” and that didn’t happen, obviously. Though I still think I could do it. I’ve been looking at cameras, in fact, and checking out Casey [inaudible 00:00:48] and what he’s doing. And, I don’t know, this show pushes my comfort zone in a big way. And I figure, like, what’s the next step? How can I get even more uncomfortable? And so, I’ve been playing with Snapchat a little bit. My Snap code, I think it’s called, is Adam G Steele. Pretty much the same as every other handle. Check me out on there. But I just may do the daily vlogging. So stay tuned on that.
At the very least, my goal is to make one video a day. At least Monday through Friday, and then maybe a Saturday and Sunday, too. We’ll just have to see. I’d like to start out with just sort of an update, as show promises to be kind of like in the trenches, what’s going on, what we’re doing day-to-day as a company, as a team. We’ve been doing kind of a few things. Like I said, I mentioned we’ve got the Snapchat thing going on. We are at a point…which is really cool. I’ve always really dreamt of this. We’re at a point, Loganics [SP] anyways, our sort of marketing agency outsourcing company, it’s at a point that we kind of have the trust of the market. I think that’s such a thing.
Before, I would come up with like a new product or a new service or a new idea, and I would hustle it, and I would get on forums and things like that. And I could sell a handful of maybe, I don’t know, $20, $30, $100-products. And now, I can blast out an email or just update the website or create [inaudible 00:02:39]. Oftentimes when we do new product launches, we’ll change our Hello Bar. If you don’t use Hello Bar, check it out. It’s really neat. There’s also Icegram. I think it’s called Icegram. I think it’s a free version or it’s a paid once version. And it’s just that, that banner at the top. I like Icegram because I find it has better integrations. It’s a little bit more customizable, if you will. And it is, I believe, one time payment which is nice, compared to Hello Bar. I think where Hello Bar is great is, I think the analytics side of Hello Bar is a little bit better. But both great products.
Anyway, so we’re kind of at this point where we can have a sale or a launch or a something like that, and get traction right away. Which is amazing, because that means that I have provided sufficient value to our customer base. Our team has provided sufficient value and created trust among our customer base and among our audience, that we can launch something and people will actually buy shit. It’s amazing.
So, last week we did a little sale, just to test something out. We’re testing on a theory. We got this big ass list of potential link opportunities, because it’s a link-building company, which we might start doing a little bit of content marketing as well because it kind of then ties in nicely. But we did a little sale. We went from our big list of hundreds of potential links, and I’m talking [inaudible 00:04:06], I’m talking about Ink, I’m talking about [inaudible 00:04:08], I’m talking about all those ones. And, so basically getting them featured on these websites. So, hustling the contributor, hustling the editor and making that happen, making that connection. And I think we did… And I think I’m okay sharing numbers on this show. I think it’s good for context anyways. We did like… First of all, we did more sales in one week than we did in an entire month. So there’s that.
But I think we did like $60,000 or $70,000 in a single fucking week. Surely, for some people, that isn’t a lot of money. But, for us, that’s a pretty solid week off one product. That’s not our other products, that’s not our other services. That’s just a single product that we’re selling in one week. And these items were like super discounted and everything. The prices were lower, so we had to sell a lot to make that. So, that was really cool.
What I think we kind of realized that we’re giving people too many options. And so we shrunk the list down, and with those few options, I think it was more bite size, more easily digested, and people didn’t get overwhelmed. And there was something for everybody, and that really, really worked. So I am stoked about that.
I met up with Mike Irechco [SP]. We just had a meeting. Mike is a former employee of mine, former team member. I talked about him on the show before. We sat down, had coffee, and then it just turned into a straight up interview. I took my phone and then I just started the interview. And I thought, “What I’ll do is, I’m going to create unique content, just for the podcast itself.” If you haven’t checked out the podcast, we’re on Apple. I don’t know if we’re on Google Play yet. Stitcher, and some others. Soundcloud. You can also find it on the website: adamgsteele.com, under our podcast there as well.
So, I’m gonna create, basically, interviews, just the audio track of course, and upload that. That’ll be sort of like a little extra that the podcast people get. So Mike and I talked about private blog networks and sys admin stuff, so system administration, servers, footprints, SEO, running agencies, like, all kinds of cool stuff. So I recommend you check that out. I haven’t put it up yet. Maybe a couple of days, I’ll have Sarah throw that up.
So, we’re busy. We’re busy. This weekend I got…it was beautiful. On Saturday, I had the entire day to myself. We had Canada Day, so the Canadians were gone. You had July 4th, the Americans were gone. No one was calling me, no one was emailing me. I sat down at noon on Saturday, and I pretty much, other than just to go to the washroom and grab something from the fridge, did not get up for 12 hours. And I just crushed work. I got more done in one day than I probably got done in two or three, that previous week. That was an amazing day and we got lots accomplished.
Anyhow, enough about that. I’m gonna try…the goal is always to keep these short, but then I ramble. So, what do we have, Riana [SP]. I grabbed a couple of questions. I grabbed a couple of topics. What’s the first one on that list?
Riana: Should we talk about the show, so far?
Adam: Yeah. Actually, how far are we into this? How many minutes?
Riana: I’m gonna cut a bit at the beginning, but maybe 10, 10 minutes?
Adam: Yeah. Let’s call Sarah. Give me my phone. Give me my phone. Thanks. I’m gonna call Sarah, because Sarah has been working much harder than me on this show. She’s the one who uploads everything, and gets everything ready. I just thought that she can speak to this so much better than I can. How weird, I got a call from Amazon. That’s strange. Let’s see if I could find her in my contact list here. Do you know how to access…there it is. Yeah, let’s see if she answers. I don’t know that she will. Where am I gonna put this that’ll actually hear it? Can I just put it here and that’ll pick it up? Or can I…do I have to…
Riana: Yeah, put it near you.
Adam: Yeah, okay. I wonder if she’ll pick up. I want to ask her some questions and get her sort of insight, because she’s gonna have much greater insight than I’m gonna have. I mean, I’ll have some, but…..
Sarah: Hello?
Adam: Hey, Sarah, it’s Adam.
Sarah: How’s it going?
Adam: It’s going really well. We’re taping the show right now.
Sarah: What are you up to?
Adam: We’re taping the show. We’re live, taping…
Sarah: I know you’re taping the show, but what are you up to calling me?
Adam: Oh, yeah. We’re talking about the show, and you know how like one of the things that we want to focus on is being sort of very transparent about what we’re doing and what’s working and what’s not working, and kind of being instructive a little bit?
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Adam: I thought you might be able to bring a little bit of insight to the table, to this desk, about what’s been working, what’s not been working, what we’ve been trying, little road bumps we’ve hit along the way. Think you could do that?
Sarah: Probably.
Adam: Probably? All right. One of the things that I’ve been kind of thinking about, or that I found super, super interesting, was that mind map that you put together. Riana, do you think you could…you’ll be able to overlay that mind map, right?
Riana: Yeah, we can [inaudible 00:10:08].
Adam: So, we’ve kind of got this worked out now. And we haven’t got it automated, so Sarah, you’re just doing it yourself, essentially, at this point. But…
Sarah: Pretty much. Not everything, but…
Adam: Most of the stuff.
Sarah: No, I mean, 98%.
Adam: Ninety-eight percent, so I do 2%. Well, I make the show, so there’s that, I guess. Oh no, wait a second. I guess Riana and Brandon deserve a little bit of…
Sarah: Yeah, it depends on what we’re exactly talking about.
Adam: Okay, so, the promotion piece. What has been, in your minds, sort of the trickiest thing to make happen?
Sarah: The trickiest thing to make happen. I think that the trickiest thing for me has been kind of navigating the mass amounts of little tiny things that you have to learn before taking on projects like this.
Adam: Yeah. So, different platforms, different platform rules and…?
Sarah: Exactly.
Adam: Every platform has sort of a…I think…
Sarah: Every platform is its own environment.
Adam: It really is.
Sarah: Things that work better on Twitter and they don’t work so well on Facebook. And you know, Snapchat’s a whole different ballgame. And there’s Instagram. Everybody kind of has their favorite. So, for me, I’m the most used to Facebook, so that was easier but still challenging nonetheless. But, yeah, it’s kind of… Twitter’s been the hardest one for me.
Adam: Do you find that we have to…
Sarah: I’m not a tweeter.
Adam: Yeah, well, I mean, if you look at our Twitter accounts, you know, you can tell that nor am I. We’re using that QUU right now, or that Q-U-U or whatever, just to try and get a little something out each day, and it’s kind of garbage. I mean, it’s nice to have something that just gets something out there, but I’m not a big fan of that type of automation. I don’t think it’s really working all that well. But what I was gonna ask is, do you find that we’re more successful if we really cater to that particular audience, like, if we create native content for Facebook, for Instagram and so on? Do you think a lot about that?
Sarah: I think that’s what we figured out kind of recently. I think, in the beginning, we were approaching it from a…trying to re-purpose the same content, or close to the same content on all the platforms. We’re kind of learning as we go that that’s not really gonna work anymore.
Adam: Yeah. And now, one of the new ideas we’ve kind of brought to the table is – and Riana, you’re gonna learn this soon – these episodes are going pretty long and we’re seeing people drop off pretty early. So what we’re gonna do is, we’re gonna chunk it up. So we’re gonna take the different topics and we’re gonna chunk it up into different sort of segments and release that as content as well. So, like, five minutes on this topic, eight minutes on that topic, three minutes on that topic, which will be cool because right now, when we release a video, the title will be like, “Topic one, topic two, [inaudible 00:13:36], and topic three,” right? There’s no opportunity to kind of optimize it. And we’re marketers. We want to optimize it for search engines and stuff.
And so, by breaking them up a little bit, we’ll be able to cater very specifically to key words and stuff, and take out… Something like that topic when we were talking about scrum, for example, we’ll be able to break out that particular topic and say, “How to set up a scrum board,” which will bring people in for three minutes.
They’ll stay for three minutes because it’s bite size, and the hope is that they’ll come in for three minutes and then they’ll check out the other show when they’re ready. Or they’ll subscribe. It’ll kind of introduce them…it’s kind of like doorway content, I think is what you would call it, or what we’re gonna call it. But, Sarah, anything that we’re working on right now that’s a real challenge and someone that’s watching the show might be able to help us out? Google Play, for one. Google Play is a total pain in the ass.
Sarah: I’m just…it’s almost like…I don’t want to say I gave up on Google Play, but I feel like I might have given up on Google Play the last couple of weeks.
Adam: Yeah.
Sarah: I don’t have an Android in my house. I think that might be one issue. And I’m just having a hard time getting the podcast on Google Play. If there’s anybody that is an Android peep or into Google Play a lot, I mean…I happen to be an Apple household over here. Maybe that’s why I’m having this experience.
Adam: Anything else that’s kind of…
Sarah: What do they call that, confirmation bias?
Adam: Yeah. Anything else that’s ruining your day when it comes to this stuff? Anything else that’s proving really tough?
Sarah: No, not at all. I don’t think anything’s really ruining my day. I think that the process has been fun in the sense of [inaudible 00:15:35]. We get to learn, and learning as we go. But it’s also frustrating in a way too. I think both of us are the same, where we want to know how to do everything off the bat.
Adam: And we’re learning all this stuff kind of for the…I mean, it’s one thing to post to Facebook. That’s one thing. But what we’re doing is very, very different. We’re creating very specific content for a very sort of specific audience, and then re-purposing it over again, and over and over again. That’s very different from just updating your status. We’re kind of learning how to ride a bike, essentially. We’re kind of learning how to do something very, very different. At least I find that challenging.
Sarah: [inaudible 00:16:21] too?
Adam: Yes.
Sarah: For example, yesterday, I was trying to…when we were talking about posting times and the best times to post on Facebook. Well, I started doing a little bit more research on that, and eventually an hour went by because I was just…there’s so much to learn and there’s so much to find out [inaudible 00:16:46].
Adam: Sarah, we’re at seven minutes. I gotta let you go. We’re already too deep. We can talk forever, but I just wanted to get a few insights from you because you’ve been doing an amazing job of getting all the content up and re-purposing it and making it native for different platforms. So, we appreciate you, Riana and I. And thank you for your insights. We appreciate it.
Sarah: And audience, help me with Google Play, please.
Adam: Yes. I will put a question at the end of the show and see what we can get. Cool?
Sarah: Cool.
Adam: All right. Thank you, Sarah.
Sarah: Bye, guys.
Adam: Cool. Anyway, so let’s quickly move on.
Riana: Yeah, I think we can do one more here.
Adam: All right.
Riana: So we’re gonna do two here. So, what is your favorite SEO metric?
Adam: Yeah, so this is from Clayton. Clayton, my favorite SEO metric right now is TTF, which is a majestic metric, majesticseo.com metric. The reason I like it is because it’s topical. We tend to focus on authority, and we tend to focus on link equity and things like that. And what we don’t…I think what a lot of SEOs…and I’m always gonna talk a little bit more about SEO than perhaps social media and other things, because it’s my native craft. We forget topical relevance. And it’s not like…I mean, we all know that we should have links coming from relative websites or local websites. We get that.
But that’s pretty hard to accomplish sometimes, and it seems that, after a while, we just kind of stop doing that. We stop paying attention to that. And what I find intriguing is, we’ve had a number of different cases where we had a roadblock. And we were throwing all kinds of links at these websites, and earning and buying and whatever. And it wasn’t moving. We had these couple of guys…in these cases we were like number three or number two in Google for a particular term. It wasn’t that tough, but it wasn’t moving. And these guys were super lame. These websites were lame, their authority was lame. They had way less links than us. Like, they were crap. But we couldn’t beat them.
So what we did is, we checked out the topical relevance of the link profile of our competitors and of our own, and we found that our own was not really at all relevant. We were just focusing on authority. So we started focusing on things like skincare, and beauty, and health, and fitness, which is sort of…it’s what these guys that were winning had. And then we beat them. It was just like that. Every link from then on for about two months was relevant to what that business did and what the other people had, and that’s how we beat them. And I’m seeing that over and over and over again now. So, I think it’s a metric that people are sleeping on. And I highly recommend that people check that out. Next one. Let’s keep going.
Riana: Okay. When should I say no to new opportunities?
Adam: Yes, Darren. Darren, I think it’s really…I think it’s hard when you’re starting out. In my opinion, I’m now, what, six, seven years in, and I feel like I’m still starting out. I’m still getting my footing and whatnot. I think it’s really…I think it’s…some people will say that you should learn how to turn down stuff. And I’m not saying take absolutely everything, even if you’re not gonna make any money, I’m saying think about what the long term value of that project is, beyond just money.
Think about what that person might…what door that particular project might open for you if you took it on. Obviously, don’t take on stuff if you’re not gonna be able to do a good job of it. Or if you don’t think that you’re the best person for that job, just let them know and be like, “Hey, you know, I don’t have a lot of experience in this, but I’ve done X and Y. And I think if I do this and that, we could probably end up with a really good product.”
But I’m the type of person that’s gonna take as many of those opportunities on as I can, that I’m not gonna screw up. Because I don’t wanna do…I don’t wanna create negative feelings with anyone. But if I can do a good job and still make a little bit of money. And sometimes I’ll do work for free, just because I know I want that connection. I want to hook that person up because I know if I hook them up once, twice, three times, the fourth time, they’re gonna bring me a monster of a client.
So, for me, I take every possible opportunity that I can get. And I learn along the way too, right? Every time I get a new opportunity, I learn about a new business, or I learn about…I learn from a new entrepreneur, a new business owner. So there’s value beyond the money as well. So, even though I get run down, and I take on way, way too much and I’m always racing against time to get it done, those opportunities open up so many doors. I wasn’t too proud to…I didn’t have all this pride and was like “No, no, I don’t do this work. That’s too cheap,” or anything like that. I looked beyond that and said, “What can this do for me later on?” So, I think there’s a point, maybe sort of in the first five years or something like that, that you take on anything.
You take on as much as you possibly can. Again, as long as you don’t screw it up. But maybe after five, maybe six years, then you’ve got to start getting really good at saying no. Because, at that point, you should have collected sort of enough experience that new experiences aren’t quite maybe as valuable and now you can sort of cherry-pick a little bit. After five or six years, you should have built up enough sort of reputation and goodwill that you’re turning people away, if you’ve done things right. You should be turning people away at five, six, seven years, assuming you’ve got a good product and you’ve done good work for people.
So then I think you want to start getting really good at saying no and picking and choosing which stuff you take on. But I believe what Darren was alluding to is, he’s starting out and he’s got a lot of cheap work coming in and he just doesn’t know when to say yes and when to say no. And I say 99% of the time, say yes. Take that work, even if it’s not very good paying or it’s a pain in the butt. Take that work, because that work, that grunt work, that crap that you’re gonna have to put up with now, is gonna pay huge dividends in five years. And in five years, you’re gonna be turning stuff down. Where are we at, time-wise?
Riana: We are…
Adam: We’re at 25? Well, let’s wrap that up. I think that’s… What was the next topic? Just out of curiosity.
Riana: Ask more questions.
Adam: Yeah, I did a video recently. It’s called “Fuck your pride, ask more questions.” I won’t get into it. I’m super passionate about it. So if I get into this, I’m gonna rant forever. So, check it out. I’m gonna post it on…I should say Sarah is gonna post it on Facebook in the next couple of days. It’s gonna be a good one. I like it a lot. Cool. Well, thank you, everybody. I appreciate your attention. We appreciate your attention. The team appreciates your attention. We’re all putting a lot of work into this. We didn’t talk enough about the show at the start. I really wanted to give you an idea of all the crap that we’re doing.
Right now, all the content that we’re putting out, and we’re grinding. We’re grinding. We’re gonna get everything out possible. And we’ll see what happens. I want your questions. I want your concerns. Anything you have to say would mean a huge amount. Subscribe. Tell your friends to subscribe. Follow us on Facebook. I’m stepping up my Snapchat game, so please check me out and tell me what I’m doing wrong, @AdamGSteele. And we’ll see you next time on episode nine. Thanks, guys.
